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It seems like I'm writing one of these stories a month, but the meteoric rise of Major League Gaming and eSports is worth noting, especially with viewership numbers like this.

MLG has released its viewing totals for its finals event last weekend in Providence, Rhode Island, and once again, they've broken their own records and the event was the biggest of the season.

Their previous record for concurrent online viewers was in MLG Orlando with 181,000, but now? Providence boasted 241,000 with 3.6 million hours of video consumed over the weekend. 175 countries tuned in to watch the event, where the highlight was the Starcraft 2 final where 16 year -old Korean Leenock bested the Swedish Naniwa for the national championship crown.

What exactly do these numbers mean? MLG has put together an infographic that shows how impressive these stats are. Most notable is the graph (below) which shows the 241,000 concurrent viewer number outpacing popular cable channels in the coveted young male demographic. MLG's CEO Sundance DiGiovanni explains the significance:

“Our viewership numbers this year have been staggering and MLG now pulls in larger audiences than several traditional television cable networks. Our LIVE streams of the Pro Circuit National Championships garnered more 18-24 male viewers than Comedy Central, MTV, TBS, and FX draw in an average quarter hour and nearly as many as Adult Swim.”

MLG claims to have a lot of big news in store for next year, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was getting Starcraft 2 on TV in one form or another. While that works in Korea where Starcraft is more or less a national sport, it would be a challenge to connect with American audiences, but I'd be curious to see how that experiment will go.

I think getting on TV is a lot less important than it used to be, as the mass stream, all-weekend format is really what these tournaments need to be fully enjoyed by fans. TV would be cool exposure, but I don't think it's by any means required.

Check out the graphic below, and stay tuned for when MLG announces their next moves for 2012.